chimney door

I've been looking into putting a coal stove in my basement. I have a small cape style house, about 1200 square feet. Lower level currently heated by an oil-hot air system, and upstairs by a few electric baseboards. I figure a decent stove in the basement should heat things nicely this winter. My question is this, the chimney for my oil burner does not appear to have a clean-out door. Is this necessary? If so, I'll look into a power vent, but i'd rather use the chimney if possible, as it's in the center of the basement and should make for better heat distribution.

I don't see why that would be a problem however when you burn coal fly ash is created, this fly ash will accumulate on any horizontal surface such as inside the flue pipe or the bottom of your chimney. It will eventually block it and/or hamper the draft when you get a lot of it. It tends to accuamualate the most in the bootom of the chimney in many setups. If you have space for it to accumulate then you'll be fine , if you don't extra space you'll have to check it frequently until you get an idea of how long it takes before it needs to be cleaned out.

I'd start out by checking it after 2 weeks to a month and go from there. We only do ours once a year and it could go much longer than that but every setup and stove is different.

You could add a cleanout door.

hmm... wonder how much that would cost. i should probably have the chimney checked out anyway. the top couple blocks appear to be deteriorating outside.

I've been burning coal for over 26 years & I've never had to use the cleanout door. (which has been broken for years) I check the inside of the chimney every year b4 I start the stove & there has never been any obstruction/soot deep enough to reach the thimble...or even close.

It is possible to have a clean out door added to an existing masonry clay lined chimney. I just had it done. I had a single flue chimney block lined chimney. I wanted a dual flue chimney so I could exhaust my both oil and coal boilers. Building another chimney column next to my existing chimney would have blocked the cast iron clean out. Mason said no problem, we will just move it. He cut a new opening in the existing block with a gasoline powered diamond blade saw. Cut like butter. When he looked inside there was no clay tile below the clay inlet thimble. No problem, he just cut open the side of the chimney and added a clay liner. Sculpted the clay tile as needed to fit. I was amazed at the ease the was able to do this. I now have a new clay lined brick dual flue chimney. $3800. It took 6 1/2 man days. It was the first quote I got and I thought it was expensive. The other two, were $6350 and $7621. After seeing how much work it was I got my money's worth. Not something I could have done, even though I considered it.

phew... more than i want to spend. i don't have room to add another flue anyhow. the existing chimney goes up thru the center of my house. i know the kind of saw you're talking about tho. never thought of that. still not something i'd try on my own.

A saw makes it easier, but can be done with a mason drill and chip hammer. I'd do it myself. Just start drilling holes and have some ready mix morter handy. I'd never laid cement block until last week. After only 20 or 30 block you get better!

Is there space below where the pipe goes in? That's all you really need to be concerned about. Just run a shop vac into it every season.

Richard S. wrote:Is there space below where the pipe goes in? That's all you really need to be concerned about. Just run a shop vac into it every season.

Quite right. You should be disconnecting the stove pipe from your chimney for the summer anyway (to cut down rusting) & just take a flashlight & look in there to clean out any accumulated soot if need be. Like I said, I've been burning coal for many years & have never even had to clean out the soot which is way below where the stove pipe connects in anyway.

yeah, there's like 3.5-4 feet below where it enters the flue, should be fine